There are loads of sites out there who want to let you have the privilege of storing your game on their servers for download. Indeed there are so many of these sites which I see advertised daily in people’s signatures at the GMC and in the download links provided that I am amazed by the poor quality hosts some people choose to have.

Today I am going to examine the features of 3 of the best game file host sites used by the gamemaker community, and I will also highlight some of the appalling hosts some people insist on using.

The hosts I am featuring are ‘instant upload’ hosts, so fully fledged webhosts such as parahosting which half the GMC seems to have fallen in love with are not going to be included in this article.

To test the various sites I am going to attempt to upload and host a 1,365KB .zip compressed folder containing a very simple gamemaker creation on all of the sites.

First up is mygmgame [gmc][url], a site which enables users to upload webpages as well as files for download if they wish. The design here seems to change at a rate of about twice a month, but from what I can make out new features are being added as the site develops.

The site has had problems from spammers in the past, in particular, porn has been posted on the site on at least once occasion and was not removed instantly even when I notified the site.

I click to register as I assume this is what I must do to upload a file although there is nothing other than my instinct to suggest this.

Straight away the site looks poor – the register page has a different design from the rest of the site. Not quite sure why they want to know my time zone, but these extra questions and checkboxes certainly don’t win it any extra marks.

After I submit my details up comes a page which looks like it is supposed to be the members dashboard, it certainly doesn’t win any marks for design or ease of use. Indeed I have still not come across any directions of how to use the site. Guessing my way along I decide to upload the file, I’ve no idea what the ‘Directory’ box is for, perhaps I can choose where on the server my file is stored – I’ll leave it blank.

It took a long time but eventually the progress bar was completed and it appears my file has been uploaded, ‘Upload Succsesfull!‘ says the site hopefully. No URL for me so share with my friends is present, but by clicking on the uploaded file name in the dashboard I am taken directly to download the file. The download takes 30 seconds, with no nonsense ‘click here to start download’ pages.

The site could be a lot more user friendly, but it serves its purpose. The file downloads.

By far the most imaginatively titled game with the most original and unique concept to be featured on GameMakerBlog. Put simply – what to avoid.

The trailer is terrible, there is no explanation of what is going on at the beginning when it appears a game is being loaded from an over-sized loading screen. The tailer also stops without warning. I don’t think this is worthy of any more words, judge for yourself.

In this post I take a very quick flashback to earlier issues mentioned in gamemaker blog and take a look to see how they are developing.

My article on the Forted game is going to be featured in a future issue of MarkUp – the gamemaker magazine I like the most. Micco the creator of the game is working on a new version to follow up some of my earlier criticisms.